


A Taste of Honey

by fionarhiannon



Category: The Night Manager (TV), Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, jonathan pine - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6870847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fionarhiannon/pseuds/fionarhiannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short drabble about a girl in a cottage that Jonathan can't quite forget</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taste of Honey

The fire burnt low in the grate, forgotten by its owner who didn’t care about warming the large drafty room, and in the corner sat an untouched bed, as cold as its surroundings; opposite, with one last 80 proof, Jonathan slouched in an armchair.   
Through lines of the cheap venetian blinds he could see the silver waves crash upon the white cliffs of the night time.   
He was dog-tired after his long ride today, and he settled into the chair to do what he did most these days – think of her.   
Every man had his personal devil waiting for him somewhere. Jonathan’s was in the memories that teased him from his sleep each night. It was in the one painting that adorned an otherwise grey, bare wall in the almost empty cottage that sat near a cliff, the perfect distance away from the little fishing village where little white or brightly coloured houses swept up the hills surrounding the bay, and the residents knew who everyone was and what everyone did.   
Jonathan remembered the first night he came into the village, his motorcycle roaring beneath him, his Lilja on the back. Some of the curtains had twitched at their disturbance.   
He stared now at the painting as if it had something to say to him. Something that could help him process what he had been through.  
Nothing could help him now. 

It was 5am and the draft from the ancient windows blew upon his naked body as he sat and listened to her; he could hear her even breaths in her sleep.   
I could sit here for hours, admiring you in this state, but it’s almost morning, and I need to take advantage of these minutes at your side he thought, lifting himself from the chair. He padded slowly and undetected over to the bed before lowering himself onto the mattress. It sunk a little with his presence. She curled instinctively against the cold and reached out for the blanket they had discarded hours ago now, once again taking comfort in it.   
He loved to feel her beautiful body shudder against his. 

‘How could you let me watch you in your sleep,’ he said aloud, ‘and yet, you break my dreams?’  
The picture still held no answers. 

‘Lilja isn’t your real name, is it?’ he asked as they lay tangled together.   
‘Is Jack yours?’  
He chuckled.   
‘I thought it sounded more… exotic,’ she said.   
He looked at her from across the pillow for a long time, drinking in her honeyed complexion and her bright green eyes; the ombre hair that fell in waves behind her.   
‘What is your real name?’ he asked her a short while later.  
She sat in his lap.  
‘I’m on the run,’ she told him, picking up his wine glass and drinking from it, watching him over the brim.  
She was studying him with bold curiosity, eyes holding one another.   
Jonathan understood the reference – she understood that he too was running. It was something he had dropped, maybe unconsciously, on their first meeting.  
Mounting him, they began to climb again. 

She exited their post-coital shower wrapped only in a towel that was branded by one of the many hotels she had been through.  
Coming over to where Jonathan sat in the corner, she first attended to the iPod dock, throwing on the second side of Surfer Rosa.   
She took his lit cigarette from between his nimble fingers, inhaled, and turned back to him.  
‘I’m a jewel thief, you know.’  
‘You have such an honest face.’ And grace, and beauty, Jonathan observed privately.  
‘Don’t be so foolish,’ she replied, turning back to face him now, blowing smoke in his face.   
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ Jonathan remarked as he steadily held the gun that pointed towards her.  
‘Cigarette?’  
‘I have to.’  
She crushed the cigarette out on the dressing table next to them, watching the pale smoke twist until its end.  
‘Oh, I agree darling. But Jack… oh, Jack,’  
She loved his name. If it wasn’t his tongue in her mouth, it was his name.  
‘I didn’t expect it like this.’  
The beautiful, well-sculpted virile man she had met on the slopes just smiled.  
‘Neither did I,’ he spoke as he pulled the trigger.

 

Jonathan rose and stretched his neck from side to side, enjoying he ache.   
His boots made a hefty thud across the bare boards as he travelled a few steps, before bending low, to his knees in fact.  
‘See now, how mine eyes have brightened because I tasted a little of this honey,’ he said, glancing at the perfect watercolour form of her on his canvas.  
Picking up the brush, he resumed his scrubbing of the crimson stained floor.


End file.
